The climate and biodiversity crisis calls for decisive action across the board. bdla: integrative and impact-oriented landscape planning
Under the motto ‘Daring to embrace more landscape’, the Association of German Landscape Architects (bdla), in collaboration with the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN), organised an update event on landscape and environmental development in Leipzig in October 2025. The focus was on how landscape planning can remain effective and capable of taking action in the face of accelerated procedures, growing competition for land use and multiple crises. Subsequently, members of the bdla’s Landscape Planning Working Group drew up a call to action for proactive landscape planning.
The focus is
on a new approach to landscape: conservation and multiple uses must be consistently considered together in order to safeguard biodiversity, achieve climate targets and resolve land-use conflicts constructively. Landscape architects are called upon to take responsibility for design, actively shape participatory processes and promote integrative approaches that transcend sectoral boundaries. This requires suitable legal and organisational frameworks, professional land management and the further development of tried-and-tested tools such as design-oriented green space planning. Landscape and open-space planning must be more closely integrated; formal and informal procedures must be strategically combined to develop resilient landscapes.
Current legislative initiatives aimed at speeding up the planning process underline the importance of an integrative planning approach. The bdla has already submitted a technical position paper on the draft Infrastructure Future Act, highlighting the need for significant amendments. Now, more than ever, we need the courage to embrace more landscape and to strengthen it as a strategic space for design. For it is in the landscape that we decide how we want to live.
The call to action is available to download free of charge and to order on the bdla website.
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